This article could be summed up in one sentence which would be: Failing to automate your field sales reporting is currently costing you a fortune in lost sales. Fortunately for the sake of this post, and especially coming from a field sales software blog, such bold statements require backing up with explanation so we’ll cover these points here. Firstly, let’s take a look at the difference between an inside sales team and field sales team.
Inside Job or Missing in Action?
If you’re a sales manager looking after an inside sales team for a telesales firm, you’re afforded the following luxuries:
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Watching first-hand the work ethic of each individual team member
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Examining changes in those work ethics on a day to day and month-to-month basis
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Gauging an eyewitness account of how different sales activities are divided
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Monitoring all aspects of sales techniques being applied, including frequency of closing
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Monitor language, enthusiasm, competitiveness and just about anything else going
With your field sales reps, you are affording precisely zero of these luxuries. Their office is their car and their activities are largely a mystery taken on good faith and checkable only by investigative work on your part.
“I Trust My Sales Team”
Trust is important. In the business world though, it simply takes a backseat to hard data. Also, having an automated tracking program or software for your field sales representatives doesn’t necessarily represent a lack of trust.
Having a complete, reliable, software-generated field report to hand means you have everything you need without enquiring and hoping or even trusting the truth will be told. This results in higher quality time spent training, coaching and conversing in general with your sales team for more meaningful discussions which produce greater sales.
How Much Time is Wasted Manually Creating “Accurate” Reports?
It’s estimated the average field salesperson spends about 40 mins each day writing reports on their activities. That’s 150 hours per year based on 5 days a week and 45 working weeks per year (just to be conservative). If your sales guys are on a $15/hr basic wage, that’s $2,250 a year. You’ve got 10 sales guys? That’s $22,500 a year on reports. Want to know the worst part?
You have no idea whether or not the reports are even accurate.
You’re spending potentially tens of thousands of dollars to distract your sales people from spending more time with clients closing sales to instead generate 100% unreliable data.
Overperforming salespeople with little time will copy and paste reports just to get them filled in while, worse than that, underperforming salespeople will spend way too much time on reports to justify their hourly wage. People often forget to enter the info and many managers won’t bother reading the reports as a result.
A Summary of Automating the Process
With no effort on your part whatsoever, tracking your field sales team with automated software affords you extensive luxuries to improve effectiveness and sales. You’ll be able to:
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See which of your customers exactly are being called, when, and how often
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Track traveling data on a map between appointments attended
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Record all conversations of all phone calls to check sales technique
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Accurately determine how your field sales people divide up daily activities
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Check efficiency of traveling methods in between routes to maximize number of appointments made each day
